SP - Economy A player adjustable throttle on prosperity gains.

[Apocal]

Prosperity is linked with consumption of food. Food, grain in particular, is a limited resource in Calradia and control of grain villages does much to determine a town's economic course. That's perfectly fine. Fighting over food resources -- for long-term strengthening of your kingdom -- is certainly more interesting (at least to me) than the map-painting willy-nilly conquest of Warband.

But the issue is that odd configurations of fiefs, caused by selectively taking castles, can cause an situation where towns have their prosperity spiral out of control to the detriment of the game economy and ultimately the player experience. As laid out in this old post (and yes, I'm aware there have been adjustments made since then) towns hit a certain critical point in their prosperity, which then tanks, resulting in a variety of negative effects. Right now, most players don't really care because it takes a -20 for their garrisons to starve but once that number is shifted back to -8, things have a chance of becoming dicey again.

Of course, there is the economic benefits of high prosperity on the other side of the coin. Risk vs. reward is fine, but only if the player has a meaningful choice in the risk he wishes to take. Not having one in the case of town prosperity rising is the problem.

My suggestion for a solution: as the lord of town, there should be a throttle for prosperity gains available to players in case they don't want their town taking the associated penalties of high prosperity. My five suggestions for forms that throttle can take:

1. A simple malus. No additional effects, simply poofing a certain amount of prosperity gain into the void.
2. Increased taxation as a prosperity malus. Effectively converts excess prosperity gains into additional income. This should be paired with a direct bit of inefficiency, easily apparent to players, to avoid the possibility of using high taxation to get the the benefit of high prosperity without the attendant downsides.
3. Boosting notable power as a prosperity malus. Instead of converting to economic strength, do it with military strength instead. More powerful notables mean more high tier troops to recruit.
4. Exporting prosperity gains. Send a portion of the prosperity gains (25% or 50% conversion?) to another town (or settlement in general), with the remainder being lost in the void.
5. As a direct player influence boost.

I'd be fine with any of them as long as they could meaningfully incremented to allow the player to put their thumb on the scale without manipulating prosperity figures directly. My perference would be for No. 4 because it would also help solve an issue with extremely low prosperity towns and castles being (nearly) unrecoverable.

 

[JuanNieve]

+1

1. Increased taxation as a prosperity malus. Effectively converts excess prosperity gains into additional income. This should be paired with a direct bit of inefficiency, easily apparent to players, to avoid the possibility of using high taxation to get the the benefit of high prosperity without the attendant downsides.
2. Boosting notable power as a prosperity malus. Instead of converting to economic strength, do it with military strength instead. More powerful notables mean more high tier troops to recruit.

I think there could also be an option to prioritize food for the soldiers in the garrison, that way when you see famine in a city they don't die so quickly.

I would like there to be areas in calradia where there is excess grain production. Something similar to what was Libya and Egypt for the Roman Empire. Then from these areas trade agreements could be arranged to feed our richest cities.

 

[Revenant342]

I would like there to be areas in calradia where there is excess grain production. Something similar to what was Libya and Egypt for the Roman Empire. Then from these areas trade agreements could be arranged to feed our richest cities.

This is already kind of a thing if you do it manually. Some areas produce very cheap food for around ~8 gold, so I always load up on a couple hundred whenever I see it at this price because you can sell it to starving cities for a high profit and help stop the bleeding after village raids hurt the food supply. My favorite is Olives from around Jaculan because they seem to have the highest margins, but fish and grain are just as good for stopping starvation.

Would be really nice if you could assign a caravan to it, though. IE, order the caravan to buy food below average market price and sell it to your own towns. AI caravans will trade food from nearby low-price regions to cities with good shortages that offer a big profit though.

The real key to keeping a city at high prosperity seems to be the nearby villages, though. All villages produce some amount of grain as a secondary product specifically for selling in town, but food-producing villages are still obviously best. They'll also give the flat +5/10/15/etc bonuses based on hearth size, so it's best to pick a town to own that has as many bound villages as possible. Some only have 2 and they struggle. Marunath and Jaculan are two of the best in my opinion because they have four and some of those villages produce food as a primary product, so they rarely starve.

The other key is to use the Irrigation daily task instead of Housing. Housing adds prosperity and can cause the town to outgrow the villages' capacity to feed it, while using Irrigation along with a production boost and a skilled engineering governor can grow villages by 2-3 hearths per day, which can make a huge impact, especially if the governor also has one of the +20% village growth perks from Athletics or Medicine (good luck training those up on an Engineer though, lol)

 

[JuanNieve]

This is already kind of a thing if you do it manually. Some areas produce very cheap food for around ~8 gold, so I always load up on a couple hundred whenever I see it at this price because you can sell it to starving cities for a high profit and help stop the bleeding after village raids hurt the food supply. My favorite is Olives from around Jaculan because they seem to have the highest margins, but fish and grain are just as good for stopping starvation.

Would be really nice if you could assign a caravan to it, though. IE, order the caravan to buy food below average market price and sell it to your own towns. AI caravans will trade food from nearby low-price regions to cities with good shortages that offer a big profit though.

The real key to keeping a city at high prosperity seems to be the nearby villages, though. All villages produce some amount of grain as a secondary product specifically for selling in town, but food-producing villages are still obviously best. They'll also give the flat +5/10/15/etc bonuses based on hearth size, so it's best to pick a town to own that has as many bound villages as possible. Some only have 2 and they struggle. Marunath and Jaculan are two of the best in my opinion because they have four and some of those villages produce food as a primary product, so they rarely starve.

The other key is to use the Irrigation daily task instead of Housing. Housing adds prosperity and can cause the town to outgrow the villages' capacity to feed it, while using Irrigation along with a production boost and a skilled engineering governor can grow villages by 2-3 hearths per day, which can make a huge impact, especially if the governor also has one of the +20% village growth perks from Athletics or Medicine (good luck training those up on an Engineer though, lol)

Yes, I remember that I got to save my city by bringing food from other areas and using the daily task irrigation. But I would like how you say, to use the caravans to automate that or to be able to arrange business deals with other merchants to pass through your city and bring food or other things. Maybe create your own silk road.

 

[Revenant342]

That would be awesome down the line. I hate the randomness of caravans the way things are now, especially how they wander straight through enemy territory in the middle of a war. Being able to give them orders and synergize them with your fiefs and workshops would be great.

For now, remembered another tip for reducing food consumption: Minimizing garrisons. Militia is good for this if you can get the right policies and the +2/2.5 bonus from archery and melee perks, which are pretty easy to train up to. Each +1 is another 40 militia troops, and once you hit 400-500 you'll rarely get attacked and can start trimming down your garrisons.

Cavalry/horse archers are also the most efficient garrison troops because they get the 1.2x power calculation bonus.